Instagram Users Take Complaints to Facebook

Instagram users took to social networks Tuesday to comment on Facebook’s acquisition of the mobile photo sharing application, and not all of them are hitting the “Like” button.

European Pressphoto Agency

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s post announcing the deal has been “liked” more than 134,000 times in the last 22 hours — “Like putting peanut butter and chocolate together!!!,” Michelle Berry Walsh wrote on Mr. Zuckerberg’s Facebook page.

But the comments on Instagram’s page on Facebook were decidedly more critical of the deal. “This is a wrong move. RIP Instagram,” wrote Francis Dee.

Having made the hard decision to pay $1 billion for a service with 30 million users but no revenue, Facebook now faces the harder task of making sure the acquisition pays off. The spirited comments on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter show that won’t be a slam dunk.

Many among the photo-app’s devoted following raised concerns about how Facebook might try to change the app, whether to make money by placing ads, hurt competitors by restricting access or somehow fiddling with privacy settings.

In a nod to such concerns, Mr. Zuckerberg said in Monday that Instagram would be kept independent. “We need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook,” he said in a release.

Instagram users weren’t immediately convinced.

“Please don’t let facebook ruin you. You need you simple and working as brilliantly as ever. We just don’t need more features and we don’t need ads,” wrote Felipov Oana on the Instagram page on Facebook.

Others feared that Facebook would prohibit Instragram’s 30 million users from sharing their pictures with other social networks. Right now, Instagram lets users to share photos easily on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and a few other social networks.

“Lets hope you don’t ruin it for those of us that have been using it for a long time, and like to share our instagram posts on places other than just fb,” wrote Richard Thorpe on the same page.

On his Instagram account, Mr. Zuckerberg posted a picture of his dog sleeping on the edge of his bed late last night. It was one of only four pictures that Mr. Zuckerberg currently shares on his account, the first of which was published on October 28, 2010.

“congrats on the purchase,” a user named MonkM wrote in a comment on the photo.” I must add however that most of us on IG are on here because it’s not FB not that there’s anything wrong with FB it’s just we like the community here…cute dog!”